An offer of "free" LLM use made to developers in the GCC and glibc communities, which are full of developers who feel strongly about free software, was never going to be received with universal acclaim...

https://lwn.net/ml/all/aac20a98-a70e-4268-a758-316ac0407a16@redhat.com

It will be an interesting day when, after the inevitable rugpull happens, these tools cease being available for use without charge. Hopefully we will still remember how to write and review code.

@corbet "Company X is generously offering Contentious Product Y.... but please lets not turn this into a discussion of Company X and Product Y".
Quite the vibe.

@corbet The six-month thing, in particular, raises a red flag for me. I am not sure why, because it's probably better that it's capped up front instead of an indefinite subscription that everyone knows will be ended *someday* but not when that will be. Perhaps because it seems finely calculated, similar to the "first one is always free" model.

@corbet they made this 6 months "offer" to QEMU too. Nobody bothered answering.

6 months and then paying 200 bucks a month per developer isn't a serious offer tbh IMO

@corbet

Have tarballs, will travel.

@corbet hopefully all involved see the obvious ploy to open-wash this technofascist bullshit.

hard pass

@jzb @corbet You should also know that Anthropic grants themselves marketing rights about your usage whereas OpenAI does not for the similar six month program.

@corbet@social.kernel.org It took longer than I expected to see such a "generous" offer. Had it happened 15 years ago I would have had more confidence that the Free Software community around the GNU toolchain projects would rightfully oppose to the idea of relying on a proprietary technology. Today, not so much 😕.

Still, kudos to @mjw@mastodon.nl for being vocal.

@never_released @corbet sounds like the drug dealer's sales strategy: the first 6 months are free (as in beer) ...

@corbet That thread went about as well as I'd expect it to go. 🍿

Please don't give up on the whole GNU Toolchain community just because two bozos are trying to promote proprietary "services". As you can see from all the replies, this isn't normal. And them saying they don't see a difference between a good faith policy discussions about free software alternatives and obvious advertisements of saas services from a specific company, that people are trying to intimidate and silence them are clownish. This isn't serious. @sergiodj @corbet